CHI07CA258 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Westerly State Airport (WST) to Westerly State Airport (WST)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA258
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Aeronca 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 7
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N65HM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westerly State Airport (WST), Westerly, RITo Westerly State Airport (WST), Westerly, RI
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · aborted
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was damaged during an attempted aborted landing. The pilot reported that he was returning from a local flight and performed a successful landing on runway 07. The pilot reported that he took off again and remained in the traffic pattern and attempted a second landing. During the landing, he felt the left wing suddenly lift up due to the crosswind. The airplane yawed to the left and the pilot applied full power with the intention of performing a go-around. The airplane settled back to the ground, collapsing the right main landing gear. The airplane's wing and propeller then struck the ground. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane during the flight. The recorded winds at an airport 11 nautical miles west of the accident airport were 340 degrees at 6 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during landing which resulted in the overload failure of the right main landing gear. The overload failure of the right main landing gear was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA258
- Event ID
- 20071018X01617
- Case number
- CHI07CA258
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 051187c24ac0d8f0c3c4d6b35209a1a382d9cc158e3dcf6d3345c0ab197a1c76; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:33:44.498Z.